Author: Kelly Sue Deconnick
Publisher: Magnetic Press
Rating: Worthy!
Art: Emma Rios
Colors: Jordie Bellaire
Edits: Sigrid Ellis
Letters: Clayton Coles (I did a search for Clayton's website on Google and it brought up this blog three times - at the top of Google's list! I guess this is his website! lol!
(see also Three for other work by Bellaire and Coles)
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.
Here's a novel-ty: I'm rating this graphic novel as a worthy 'read', but not on the basis of what I read. Instead, this rating is based solely on the basis of what I saw! The artwork is remarkable, and it's worth 'reading' for that alone. The story, on the other hand, lost me completely. Maybe you will have a better time with it, but no matter how hard I tried to follow it, I could not figure out what story was being told here or what I was supposed to take away from it.
It's obviously about death, but it seems to be a meld of a western novel and a Greek tragedy, and it seems also to be that supposed no-no of the story telling world: it's all a dream, or at least it's all happening in some sort of a dream world. Or at least part of it is. Or something. See what I mean? It's confusing, and I felt bad about that. maybe I'm missing something, but I felt like it oughtn't to be that hard to enjoy a novel!
But this is a graphic novel, so I don't expect each panel to be filled with expository text, yet when we get multiple pages with little or no text (and then the occasional panel which is jammed with text!) and with small images that, beautiful as they are, don't offer much in the way of exposition, it makes reading a chore rather than a pleasure, and there's no excuse for that.
The idea of the story is what appealed to me: death has a 'daughter'? How cool is that? This vengeful 'daughter' is definitely not one to forgive trespasses, and she rides out wreaking havoc, and evidently needs to be reined in at some point. This whole story is encapsulated in a tale told to a butterfly by a dead rabbit. I have no idea what that's all about. And what's with the sword she carries? These pieces just didn't fit together for me, although now I think back on them, I do so with a warm smirk on my face!
The graphics are, in places, very violent and gory, just FYI. I know this is about death, and the setting is the purported 'wild" west, but that level of blood and guts seemed a bit much for this particular story; however, as I said, the artwork was spectacular overall and it merits support for that alone. It would be a tragedy if Emma Rios illustrated no more stories because one such as this failed. Not that disappointment in the writing will cause it to fail - thankfully!
Other than the artwork, one really interesting aspect of this graphic novel is that it's almost entirely female-centric with regard to the development team, and that's another reason it grabbed my attention. The comic-book world has thankfully never been devoid of women, but traditionally it's been dominated by men and it's liberating to see that antiquated 'norm' being so strongly challenged with this contribution.
